


Stars in the Jar of the Sky

by themorninglark



Series: title prompt challenges [7]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Growing Up, M/M, Magical Realism, Neighbours, Photographer Akaashi Keiji, a lot of gazing at the night sky, aged up (just a little - to working age), dreamers and stargazers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 12:12:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5967022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>When he develops the film pictures, they come out different from the digital ones, and there they are again -</p>
  <p>Those flecks of brightness, glimmering faintly against that 3 AM sky.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	Stars in the Jar of the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Title Prompt Challenge with [nein](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nein/pseuds/nein), Round 4: _Mushishi_ chapter titles edition!
> 
> This is my first try at magic realism, a genre I love, for Haikyuu!!; I hope you enjoy. (also, I love AkaKen. a lot)

_  
_

_  
_

_"I can see them, Keiji."_

_"See what?"_

_"…the stars._ "

 

 

✩

 

 

Standing on the platform, Akaashi spots him on the other side of the tracks.

He has time enough to catch a quick glimpse of blond hair, fading into dark, before it ducks behind a pillar, but it's the movement that he recognises, the careful minimalism of it in the limited space that he inscribes.

Then the train comes, and when it leaves, he's gone.

 

 

"I saw him today," Akaashi remarks to Bokuto, who, despite being on speakerphone, manages to fill the entire living room with his voice.

He puts the kettle on, and takes down a jar of green tea from his cupboard.

" _Who?_ "

"Kenma. You know, the elusive neighbour. The one whose apartment is always dark."

"Weren't you going to go round to his and offer him some lightbulbs?"

"No, Bokuto-san," says Akaashi, patiently. "That was your advice."

"Oh. Weren't you going to _take_ it?"

"No," says Akaashi. He takes a teaspoon from his drawer, measures out his tea leaves precisely and scoops them into a ceramic teapot.

"Why _not_?" Bokuto demands, sounding offended.

"Because it's bad advice."

"Akaashi! You _wound_ me! What's wrong with being friendly?"

Akaashi leans back against his kitchen counter, waits for the water to boil and glances out at the pitch-dark sky.

It's a cool night. He's opened his windows slightly, just enough for the wind to sweep through, brush his cheek; his hair's still damp from his shower, and he hears the rustling from the leaves outside, feels the light chill run down his neck.

As he watches, the street lamps blink into life one by one; pinpricks of gentle glowing white all down the street, bright as the sky is clear and cloudless.

"I think... Kenma's the kind of person it pays off to be patient with," says Akaashi.

He half-expects Bokuto to offer him another suggestion that borders between genius and utter idiocy, like _how about you set off some fireworks outside his window_ , but to his surprise, Bokuto goes silent for a second.

Akaashi goes over to his mobile phone, picks it up and taps the receiver. "Hello?"

"Hey! Sorry! I'm still here! I was distracted - "

 _This_ is more like the Bokuto he knows, thinks Akaashi.

"I see. By what?"

"I thought I saw something in the sky. Like a _UFO_."

"Bokuto-san, UFOs are not scientifically proven to exist."

"You're such a party-pooper, Akaashi."

"It wasn't a UFO, was it?"

"No," Bokuto mumbles. "Just a plane or something, I guess. It disappeared real fast."

Akaashi, poker-faced, sets his phone back down on the table, and returns to the kitchen. Carefully, he picks up the kettle and fills his teapot.

It's familiar, and comforting - the subtle, delicate scent of tea, the steam, wafting faintly on the night air, like jasmine - and he remembers - 

 

 

✩

 

 

\- a figure on the balcony, holding a cup of _sencha_.

His gaze is distant, somewhere over the railing, and Akaashi, who's still in the middle of unpacking his boxes, leans out just far enough from his side of the wall to see a face half-veiled behind blond hair. He's wearing an oversized red sweater, with sleeves that slide down his wrists.

There are plants on that balcony, bellflowers and milky white peace lilies, and a cat-shaped windchime hanging above that tinkles in the breeze.

"Hey," Akaashi calls.

His neighbour doesn't turn, not immediately.

Akaashi sees the minute shift in his shoulders, the slight flicker of his eyes, and they're startling, when he catches sight of them in profile. Gold, keen and sharp.

He doesn't look very old - perhaps about the same age as Akaashi - but where his body's smaller, slighter, there's something eternal about those eyes. Akaashi can't shake the feeling that they're sizing him up in that fleeting instant, pinning him where he stands - but only for a moment -

The windchime sounds again. 

Akaashi draws a breath, and the blond boy stirs.

"You're the one who moved in yesterday."

His voice is low, and trails off at the end, thoughtful. When he speaks, it's a fact, not a question.

Akaashi nods. "Yeah. I'm Akaashi Keiji. Looks like we'll be neighbours."

A small smile like a sunrise curves his neighbour's lips, briefly lingering.

"Keiji. I'm Kozume... Kozume Kenma," he says.

He turns that gaze back out towards the horizon, and Akaashi, unconsciously, follows. There doesn't seem to be anything in particular to look at. The scenery's not what he'd call _inspirational_ , really, just more buildings, apartment blocks in grey and red brick all down the street. Beyond, the mountains of Kanto, and beyond _them_ , out of sight, the sea, and the rest of the blue sky.

And Akaashi doesn't remember to marvel at the easy way his neighbour says his first name, because it sounds so natural.

 

 

Walking home that night with his hands full of grocery bags, he takes a moment to savour the rare view of the full moon. It's not something he got to see much, living in the middle of Shibuya, and he thinks, he's glad he moved.

The pale light's ghostly on the pavement, on the puddles; it shines through the leaves overhead, dappled patterns casting shifting shadows on the road. The rainclouds have cleared, leaving only a canvas of midnight blue behind.

Up ahead, he sees someone familiar sitting at the foot of the stairwell that leads into his building.

Kenma turns to watch him as he approaches. He's still wearing that red sweater, with matching trackpants, and he's got his knees up, hugging them close.

Akaashi sees the moon in his eyes.

"Kenma-san," he greets his neighbour. "Are you out for the view too?"

"Keiji… Yeah, I guess I am."

Kenma's pause is infinitesimal, like the tilt of his head; Akaashi misses neither.

He wonders what else there is to be out here for, and retreats, for now, into the safety of a platitude.

"The moon is beautiful tonight," he remarks.

"The moon...?"

Kenma's gaze flicks towards Akaashi for a moment, flicks back to the sky, and he cups his palms together, brings them up to rest his chin on the back of his hand.

"Yes," he says. "I suppose it is."

Akaashi thinks he sees the remnant of a stray thought on the tip of his tongue, half-formed; thinks that, for a moment, there are flecks of brightness in Kenma's eyes that are not the moon or anything he's ever seen, something _celestial_ -

 _I'm seeing things,_ he thinks, with some measure of annoyance. _Bokuto-san must be rubbing off on me._

The wind whips down the corridor, chilly for this time of year. 

Kenma looks away.

 

 

✩

 

 

Later, Akaashi - restless, unused yet to his new bed, his new neighbourhood - will bring his cameras out to the balcony and try to shoot the moon.

Next door, he notices a shadow as sleepless as he is.

The hour seems late to make conversation.

So Akaashi listens. To the tinkling of the windchime, the steady _click-click-click_ of his shutter, the light footsteps padding indoors and the sounds of the night.

 

 

When he develops the film pictures, they come out different from the digital ones, and there they are again -

Those flecks of brightness, glimmering faintly against that 3 AM sky.

If Akaashi didn't know better, he'd say his lens must have been dusty, but he _does_ know better. Bokuto's often called his equipment maintenance routine _freaking obsessive-compulsive_ , and that's the kindest description he's used for it, a fact which Akaashi wears on his sleeve like a badge of honour.

They don't show up on the digital pictures. He checks the RAW files in Lightroom to be sure, and they are perfect, unmarred, unspoiled in their darkness.

In the absence of any likely explanation, Akaashi settles on Ockham's Razor, ever-reliable. _Maybe the film was damaged,_ he concludes with reluctance. A bad batch, perhaps.

He keeps the photographs in a spare manila envelope, puts it away in his desk, and thinks little more of them.

 

 

✩

 

 

It's in the nature of his job to keep erratic hours. He's grown used to it, the coming and going, the late nights, and he's committed to memory the local taxi numbers, weekend bus schedules and the rumble of the last train out of Tokyo.

Now that he's closer to the countryside in Chiba-ken, Bokuto piles him with assignments that involve extensive trips out to, alternately, the coast, the middle of nowhere and a whole lot of nothing.

Akaashi accuses him of doing it on purpose. Bokuto's impassioned response is that Akaashi is the best photographer he has for sitting in one spot patiently for hours to catch _one_ sodding shot of some bird the size of his palm.

Akaashi, though unmoved by Bokuto's effervescent flattery, acknowledges the truth of his strengths with an unspoken acquiescence.

And when he goes out to the balcony, sheathed in his infinite patience, he hopes -

For the scent of _sencha_ , a glimpse of a red sweater.

 

 

(It's always the oddest times of night when he appears -

Once, just as a thunderstorm's fading, and Akaashi sees him shield his eyes as he looks up into the lightning.

Once, it's not _sencha_ he smells but apple pie at 1 AM, cinnamon-fresh, and it's autumn drifting across to him on the wind, dry leaves and crunching sounds and that _red-orange-brown_ that colours the world, and Kenma, seeing Akaashi outside with his 120 film Pentax, leans over to offer him a slice.

Akaashi takes it gratefully. It's still warm.

And then there's 3 AM, and shared silence that settles into companionship.)

 

 

One night, Akaashi looks down his lens at slightly parted lips, a tiny breath of white dissipating on the still air.

"May I take a photo of you on your balcony?" he asks.

Kenma, startled, turns to him with wide eyes; Akaashi lowers the camera.

"It's not for work or anything. I won't publish it," he adds quickly, hoping he sounds reassuring. "It just… makes a nice picture. I'll give you a copy."

He raises his fingers, forms a frame with them round the profile of Kenma's soft features, zooms it out to catch his posture, leaning over the railing, head tilted.

A pale pink blush crosses Kenma's cheek. It fades, as suddenly as it blooms.

"All right," says Kenma, looking back out at the distant horizon. "But I don't want a copy."

"Okay." Akaashi nods.

"It's not that I think it'll be bad, I just don't really like... being the centre of attention, or seeing myself in photos…"

And Akaashi sees Kenma's grip tighten on the railing as his voice grows quiet, quieter, his gaze drifts back towards Akaashi for a moment, searching for understanding.

"Thank you," says Akaashi, sincerely.

 

 

The rain clears in December, and the days grow shorter, cooler.

Akaashi, deprived of natural light for shooting, starts to spend more time at home. He devotes more of his working hours to post-processing, helps Konoha, his hapless Art Editor, deal with Bokuto's mercurial, last-minute demands for layout change, and, in his pockets of spare time, works on his own projects.

The _Balcony Series_ , for lack of a more poetic title, is growing, slowly but surely.

 

 

✩

 

 

He remarks, "I always see you here - "

It's banal, he knows, as a way into conversation, but Kenma's proven not to be one for small talk or unnecessary pleasantries, which is something Akaashi appreciates very much.

So he goes straight for the question, one winter's evening.

The chill breeze wraps around them like a secret. Akaashi rubs his hands together rapidly for warmth, blows into them and jams them into his pockets; tonight, the sky is dull, and there will be no pictures to be taken.

Kenma, his head down on his arms, tips his gaze up to look at him.

And Akaashi asks, "What is it you're looking at?"

"If I told you, you wouldn't believe it," says Kenma.

Akaashi raises an eyebrow at him.

"Now I'm curious."

So Kenma tells him.

 

 

He's right. Akaashi doesn't believe it.

 

 

_"But… stars are a myth. A legend. They don't exist."_

_"That's what you think when you grow up."_

_"They're a children's folktale - "_

_"That's because children can see them. They're there, Keiji. They're real. I've never stopped seeing them."_

 

 

Akaashi doesn't believe it, or rather, he struggles to -

With his photographer's eyes, he sees only what's in front of him, and he sees the entirety of it.

He sees the complete darkness of the sky above them, tries to recall to mind his childhood, reach through the haze of made-up pictures and stories to find something - _real_ , Kenma had said -

He sees the conviction in Kenma's face, the kind of quiet confidence that doesn't need anyone else to believe in it.

He knows his own truth, and so, too, does Akaashi.

 

And so Akaashi asks, "What do they look like?"

 

 

It takes a long time for Kenma to put it into words, at first, and Akaashi gets the feeling that he's never had to.

He speaks of tiny, brilliant pinpricks, winking in and out of sight, far away. He speaks of street lamps that recede into the distance, down the street; asks Akaashi to imagine the furthest one, and then the one after that, and after that, as though they lined the path all the way to the mountains, as though the glimpses of moonlight peeking through the leaves were made so small that a thousand of them could fit on the palm of a human hand, and then a thousand more -

Because the stars would not stay. They are not made of anything that is meant to be held on to. They are glowing heat and light, the purest form of incandescence, and you'd burn your fingers if you tried to touch one.

 

 

✩

 

 

Kenma draws a peculiar five-pointed shape on the back of a newspaper, and hands it to him, across the balcony wall that divides them.

"This is what people say they look like."

Akaashi takes the paper. He studies it, puzzled.

"Is this what they look like?" he asks.

Kenma shakes his head. "No."

"Then, why - "

"I don't know," says Kenma, with a diffident shrug. "People are weird. But maybe it's because they can't _really_ see them."

Akaashi follows Kenma's gaze skywards, and smiles.

"I wish I had your sight," he says.

Kenma lets out another soft winter's breath, and dips his head.

His eyes are shaded, for a second; his hair spills fine over his cheek, and when he speaks again, his voice is barely a whisper, a plaintive confession that sparks and falls apart, falls into dust, fades like that elusive sliver of light just beyond Akaashi's reach.

"It's going away."

 

 

_"What do you mean, it's going away?"_

_"They feel further. I can't see them like I used to. I don't turn on the lights now, because I see them better that way, but…"_

_"The stars are going away?"_

_"…I don't think it's the stars."_

 

 

✩

 

 

When Konoha phones him at 7:57 AM, Akaashi knows it must be a desperate situation and so he throws off his blankets, packs his laptop and a thermos of emergency coffee, and braves the morning hour rush into central Tokyo. It's as chaotic as he remembers.

Bokuto tackles him at the door with an enthusiastic headlock. Akaashi immediately regrets everything.

"Hey hey hey! I nearly forgot what you _looked_ like, Akaashi!"

"Bokuto-san," Akaashi chokes out, "please let me go. I have to help Konoha-san with the layouts."

"He has to help me with the layouts!" Konoha echoes, yelling across the office.

Akaashi, who's come prepared, stuffs a _nikuman_ into Bokuto's open mouth and extricates himself to join Konoha at his desk.

Konoha explains that they're four hours from off stone and Bokuto wants to _do something about the images_ on this one article or they're _not going to print_ , so help him God, and upon being asked what the _heck_ he means by _do something_ , he'd made some grandiose gestures and said something approximating to _make it better!_

Akaashi, growing more irritated by the minute, turns on his computer and spends the next half hour immersed in a deep excavation of his photo library.

And Bokuto, hovering at his shoulder, zooms in - in that unerring way of his - on the one photo Akaashi doesn't want anyone to see -

"Who's _that_?"

"My neighbour," says Akaashi.

Bokuto gapes at him. "The _elusive_ one?"

"Yeah."

"Can we use this picture? It's _awesome_."

"Thank you. You can't. Please go away, Bokuto-san."

"Awww, really?"

"Yes, really."

 

 

Bokuto's right, Akaashi knows. It's one of his best photos.

Silhouetted against the night sky, Kenma seems, somehow, like he _belongs_ , in a way that he never quite does when Akaashi sees him on train platforms, stairwells and corridors; his lips are parted, just enough to draw a quiet breath, and his hair's the palest blond, his eyes liquid gold in the dark.

But it's the gaze that really makes the picture, and it's something Akaashi knows he can't capture anywhere else, no matter how patiently he waits.

That yearning - unspoken - rooted in wonder, and something else -

The ephemeral nature of it all.

 

 

(Stars, after all, like childhoods, were never meant to last forever.)

 

 

And on the cusp of the New Year, Akaashi hears -

" _Keiji._ "

There's an urgency to Kenma's voice tonight; it's charged with intensity, with loss, even, Akaashi thinks, with a tinge of the sudden burning that's  _starlight_ -

"I can't see them."

"I'm coming round," says Akaashi. "Open your front door for me in five minutes."

(There's something he has to look for, first.)

 

And Kenma does.

 

 

His apartment's startlingly normal, at first glance: a mirror image of Akaashi's own, shoes on the left wall, kitchen on the right, wooden furnishings and a _kotatsu_ in the centre of the room, set in front of a huge widescreen TV with a PlayStation and controller plugged in.

On the walls, there are posters:

Posters of scenes from a vivid imagination, from Ghibli movies. Of floating castles and fireflies, of forests stained gold with speckled sunbursts, of skies filled with bright streaks and gently drifting snow.

(Later, Akaashi will learn that these are _shooting stars_ , something that children made wishes on.)

Kenma shuts the door behind them. To Akaashi's surprise, he reaches for him. His hand is cool to the touch, and small, but sure.

He tugs them both to the balcony, where they find an empty spot for two next to the bellflowers, underneath the windchime.

It's still tonight, and silent. The air does not stir.

Akaashi tilts his head up.

"I can't see them anymore," Kenma repeats.

He sounds calm, holds himself steady, composed; and as he tears his gaze from the sky, looks down at the pavement, at the twinkling of the lights that line the street, it's only the nearness of him that tells Akaashi he's trembling.

"It's so dark," he murmurs. "I might forget about them tomorrow."

Akaashi shifts, leans in. Their forearms brush.

Kenma softens. He doesn't move, speak; dips his head closer, doesn't put into words the question on both their minds, because it's bigger than them, bigger than galaxies and fate and chance encounters between two watchers.

_Is this what it means, to grow up?_

Akaashi thinks of Bokuto and his UFO sightings.

He thinks, maybe, that when they're not looking, when they least expect it, it comes back to them -

(in flashes - like _stars_ \- )

 

"They're still there, though," he says, with a quiet confidence.

Kenma glances up at him. "How do you know?"

Akaashi smiles.

"I have something for you."

 

And from a manila envelope under his arm, he pulls out a set of photographs he'd forgotten about, until this moment.

 

 

 

✩

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (i can always be found @nahyutas on twitter to talk about magic realism and akaken)


End file.
